SC - Re: Books on the sheilf

[RuddR at aol.com]

Terry Decker writes:  
  
>  Pretty good selection of books for a beginner.  Forget the recipes in
>  Fabulous Feasts, read it for other information. 

Pelner-Cosman's sources for some of the recipes seem to have been Forme of 
Cury (Warner's edition, similar to Pegge's), and Two Fifteenth-Century 
Cookery-Books.  A fun research project/game is to go through F. F. with her 
sources to hand, and try to find the source for each redaction, and determine 
how close or far off it is.  I have figured out that about half the recipes 
in F. F. are completely invented by Pelner-Cosman, her students or caterers, 
the remaining half are actually from the sources named, half of those are 
altered a lot (mostly because she doen't know what almond milk is!), and the 
remaining one quarter are pretty close to the originals (a very few are right 
on the mark).  True, it is a lot of work, but a great way to get familiar 
with a couple of basic primary sources.  

As for reading her for the historical information in the rest of the book . . 
. well, how can you trust the research of a medieval food scholar who doesn't 
know what almond milk is, and declares that the instructions were never 
written down, and the process lost to time?  (She obviously didn't read Two 
Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books very closely, and should have read Joy of 
Cooking.)

The pictures are great.

Rudd Rayfield